what this blog is for: documenting my gamedev journey, as a form of both self discipline and fun. if i post about it: then it exists. otherwise: it lives in my head rent free. also sharing and saving queer videogame projects
what im passionate about: stories revolving around faeries, pirates, witchcraft, and otherwise fantastical and/or fictionalized elements. amplifying and creating stories by and about queer people.
programming details: primarily studying and using C++, Python, and Godot. currently a CS minor, will be a first-year CS major next year. general free-program and open-source enthusiast, and user of Krita, Pixelorama, Blender, Twine, and more to be added and/or discovered.
interests: worldbuilding, traditional art forms, fiber arts, videogames, psychology
tagging system: WIP
#kingsoriginal : posts made by yours truly, to seperate from reblogs
#kingsreblogs : vice versa of above
#kingsdesign : posts about design progress and processes, may post sketches and wips on occasion
#kingscode : posts about coding stuff im learning about or am writing
blog disclaimer:
NO "AI". no exceptions: no training, "inspiration", etc. all art of mine, posted or otherwise, is my own creation, and i will always credit my inspiration sources directly. anyone found to be disrespecting this boundary will be blocked and reported.
back to c++, yippee!! i studied for a while yesterday on java, and have come down with something due to the stress of school starting + my mom picking something up from a business trip, so im going easy today and doing the for loop section from Sololearn. one notable thing learned was the ability to use continue and break as learned about from switch cases, which is pretty cool. i also did the section quiz, which was a culmination of the different conditional and loop sections, which i did pretty alright on! it was nice to see im retaining things from Sololearn well, as im still very early on in learning from learncpp.com and havent gotten to these sections yet
today im starting on my java learning journey, with the book Introduction to Java: Programming and Data Structures 12th Edition by Y. Daniel Liang. before jumping in, i cant help but be very excited to learn java for the explicit purpose of coding minecraft mods, as that sounds like a super fun project and usage of this language for me :P ultimately game dev is why im learning c++, so having a game dev equivalent usage for java will help me retain it in the long term, as i already have interest in that application. i intend on eventually learning pygame to retain and stretch my python knowledge for the same purpose, though i dont have something specific like minecraft modding to work towards, so we'll see.
in the introductory section, im also learning that android phones are developed in Java, making it promising to be able to make android compatible (which is the phone i use) mobile software without much hassle, which is super cool. i also learned that java, like c++, is a compiled language, uses classes (namespaces in c++), has the same commenting system, same use of ; to end statements, and more. while there are a vast amount of differences, finding these similarities is both cool and helpful for retention!
Ever wanted to gay romance that cool alien dude in [AAA space game]?
Well you still can't because the game designers/investors/managers/their parents didn't want to/think you would be interested in him.
But we made a game about that! (And where you might be able to.)
Happy to share Unconventional Interest, our game for the Queerness and Games Jam!
>> AVAILABLE FOR FREE WOW <<
Above is the amazing concept artwork by Polaris Art (on Twitter / on Bluesky), the same artist who worked on our in-game sprites and page assets! :>
Our team also included Dunkboy Hotmail for music and sound design, EthiopianPolice for programming the Unity Version, and we got the scholar advice of by jHomps! You can find the full credit list on the itch page 📝
The Unity Prototype has little story and features but features music, a 3D ship and several characters sprites. If you want the full narrative adventure, you can experience it in the text-only, interactive story Twine Version which features more dialogue, interactions and the complete story! Check out the itch.io page for all the info.
It was my first time actually working on writing / directing for a game that is now finished. It was an intense week of work but I had a blast 😄 Learned a lot too, especially in the amount of work even a "small game" asks for lol. And now can I can call myself a game writer without feeling like I'm a fraud!!!!!!! Nice.
Feel free to leave your thoughts here or on the itch.io page and tell us what you think! :>
hey! next month (december), i'm aiming to release an update to the episode 3 demo. it'll have chapters 5-12, in which a lot of various events happen to your favorite characters from the spare parts universe.
for those who don't know, Spare Parts is an ongoing visual novel series about gay little robots and their gay little brain problems.
the first episode is free on itch, the current ep3 demo (chapters 1-4) is still available as an early access bonus on itch:
"Find Your Place in Heaven"
i wrote a bit more about it in this public patreon post, and i'll have plenty more to say about it when it's out. so view these images and look forward to it!!!
today school started up again, and hot diggitiy damn is it going to be a rough semester so c++ may take a stronger backburner than i was anticipating, but i can still do this challenge by studying Java with my Computer Science I course so! for it i downloaded the eclipse IDE (which i already had the c++ version on my laptop, whoopie me), and thats all as i dont have any assignments until next week. i still wanted to hit a 2 minute goal post for c++, though, so i studied Sololearn's short loop section, which went over while and do-while loops, and different ways to have increments in c++ to avoid infinite loops
fingers crossed this will be the start of a good streak. work broke it, but ive been reading atomic habits by james clear, so im going to start implementing those practices into c++!
a part of this process involves starting habits small, so im going to drop the 1 hr requirement of studying, for sake of my attention span and tracking that i study at all instead of not marking anything if i dont hit that goal point (like i did yesterday), so today i studied 1.3, variables and objects, and learned about the basics of these concepts including how theyre called without assignments of details.
Asphodelium was a visual novel made pretty fast from initial concept to first demo, meaning all of the character designs (as well as the rest of the project) were done in about 2 1/2 months. I normally like to give myself a lot of time to figure out character designs (like several months), but that didn’t happen for this project.
The character I focused on the most for getting the right design was naturally Aster, the love interest. He’s on screen for a majority of the time and is the character you’ll be falling for, so it’s important to get his design right.
I wanted his hair to be messy and wispy, like it floated in the wind. I also wanted it to be something purple-ish, but I couldn’t decide if it should be light or dark. I went with something similar to the 2nd one here, though I ended up making it longer.
The next step was deciding on an outfit! Aster is a traveler who has spent the last several months roaming the country and the game is set during winter, so a jacket was a must. I went through several different styles of coats for him, ranging from something with a tight waist to bulky, oversized jackets. The oversized jacket on the far right is what won—it felt cozy while not exuding high confidence like the far left jacket does.
After another redraw of the outfit, all that was left was….the hair, again. I still hadn’t decided on a hair color for him, so I made quite a few tests. It wasn’t until a few people suggested mixing a few of the colors to make a duotone hair for him that I came upon the final design for Aster.
Next is Charlotte! She was the easiest to design as I already had an idea for her—a bob haircut with a fluffy pullover jacket.
Getting the shape of the hair was a bit of a challenge as well as the right shade. I wasn’t planning on making most of the characters have duotone hair, but by this point I realized it was inevitable.
Charlotte isn’t shown much with her coat which is a shame, it’s my favorite part of her design. I considered making her an extra outfit as well, but no one else would have as many outfit customizations as her (as she also has an apron) so I scrapped it.
Next is Bryn. Their design was somewhat hard as they’re the most energetic of the group and an ex-soldier, but I wanted something more modern for them. I had tried to design the cast around fantasy Victorian aesthetics, but Bryn threw that out of the window.
I knew I wanted them to have long hair and was leaning towards a red/brown hue for it. I ended up going with a hair style similar to the 1st, where it’s a messy short brown with a longer ponytail over the shoulder.
Last is Alexei, Charlotte’s younger brother. He’s a hunter who keeps to himself a lot, not talking much and preferring to be out in the forest.
Because I associate forests and fishing with him, I was originally planning on giving him a green color scheme, but I ended up giving Bryn a green-ish color scheme and a blue color scheme would be too close to Aster’s color scheme.
I had no clue what to do with his design! I wanted it to incorporate a scarf (again, winter) but had no clue what kind of jacket to put him in. After some more tests, I ended up putting him in a turtleneck and vest/jacket.
And here’s the final lineup!
What do you mean I’m missing a character? This is the entire cast! ...That’s designed.
I actually didn’t finalize the main character Hazel’s design before finishing the first demo, as they don’t have a sprite and only show up in CGs (the first demo didn’t have any CGs).
What will he look like in the full game? Something similar to these, namely the bottom right sketch. You can see Hazel’s design soon in the full game, coming out at the end of January 2024.
a dark slice of life boys love about your past confronting you
We continue our "New Year, New Dragons" series! ✨(I'm now convinced it should be a thing...)
Here's the second updated artwork by @halybs 🐲
“Knowledge. Progress. Future.”
It was the caption with the first version of this concept artwork that we shared last year. It’s fun to see how things hold up with time, especially after our worldbuilding review last fall!
wooo im building a proper streak again! lets goooooo, it might get broken by this weekend cause i work, but i hope not. also i just realized i talked all formal and shit last post, and im pretty sure it was because i popped by work in the morning and then was volunteering for a lot of my day lol so i didnt even notice. /shrug
anywho, thank you to @ryuji-terix for suggesting Sololearn, as I will now be using some of my 1 hr goal time to do that alongside learncpp.com! im doing the 20min/30day set up, so hopefully ill be able to keep it consistent, and having a website track that will be good encouragement B)
as im working through it, im seeing different practices such as the difference between 'endl' and '\n', where Sololearn has just taught me in a lesson to use the former and others have taught the latter, which is neat! it shows the flexibility of coding languages, which is a cool aspect of programming. no two peoples code will be exactly the same, even with implementing best practices, because their experiences and learning history will lend them to do different things.
today i finished the basic concepts section of Sololearn, and on learncpp.com i went through the first two sections of the basics chapter, leaving off on the third as my attention started waning. the difference in depth between what is considered basics is definitely steep, but both have their values
// this is a non functioning piece of code
// if you compiled this shit the compiler would go oops!
// nothing here!
// but! still considered code thus neheheheh
// f i l l e r
// fr tho im becoming a master (/hj) at this "basics of c++" shit
// its wild how many things ive started cause good lord
// learncpp.com and Sololearn save me from this timeloop
Hello again. After that hiatus due to again life, I am once again jumping ship from a resource as I found this nifty little note in the documentation of Exercism's C++ course:
If you are brand new to the C++ language, you should spend time learning the basics of the language first.
UGH. I just want a simple learning course that's free and avail- Oh. learncpp.com exists. And Exercism recommends it right under that above note. Isn't that just simple as shit. Thus, here we are, starting over for (hopefully) the last time. I won't say I'm not frustrated, because I am, but at least I've found what looks like a good final destination. While I do have a tendency to over-complicate, it's hard not to when I'm interacting with intermediate resources with hardly a beginners knowledge. My mistake.
This is not all a downer, though, as 1.0 of this resource goes through very basics of C++ including!! How to set up an IDE using Visual Studio as its first example, so now I know how to use it! Actually helpful basics! Woo! Unfortunately for me however, going through 1.0-1.1 took an hour, so I will just have to return tomorrow to get to the good stuff :) [putting a gun to my adhd head]
